Gee, then I shouldn't have referred to myself as a Software Engineer since my degree was actually in Physics. Perhaps I should have complained to GE Aerospace or RCA or NSA all those years. Engineering is a term used to describe an action or discipline. It can be practiced without a piece of paper (they stopped using sheepskin even before I graduated) issued by a college.
I remember working at RCA Missiles and Surface Radar with Dr. Patton - the "Father of phased array radar." When we had a problem he couldn't solve, we called in a Senior Engineer SME to come up with the solution. That man was the most highly respected member of the engineering staff even though he only had a high school education. College was boring. He could learn what he wanted to know faster on his own.
My experience was a little different. I took the only course offered at the time - Computer Programming - as an elective because it looked interesting. I loved it. IBM hired me and called me a Junior Programmer. Two years later four of us started a software as a service company. I decided that I preferred designing and developing solutions to problems better than managing others, so I switched primarily to the technical side. By that time, the title Software Engineer was in common use and I spent the next 37 years being called one.
On the other side of the coin, I also used to know a guy who had a PhD in Nuclear Physics who drove a taxi in Philadelphia. Should we have called him a physicist? Sorry, we called him a cab driver. He too eventually got bitten by the software bug and became a Software Engineer at RCA GCS in Camden, NJ. Did neither of us deserve that title?
Perhaps Will said it best, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet."
Dino
